


Together

by tentacledicks



Category: Original Work
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-29 22:13:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20089600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentacledicks/pseuds/tentacledicks
Summary: While investigating a tragedy in an outlying village, apprentice mage Hidelbert makes a discovery that could change everything for him. Whether or not he's willing to take a chance on it is a different question entirely.





	Together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alch/gifts).

The village, when they came upon it, was almost completely destroyed. They’d had little hope of finding survivors anyways—the reports that had come into the city had described a column of smoke that cut through the summer sky for days—but still, the devastation was sickening. In truth, they were simply lucky that the fields closest to the village had been left fallow this year, otherwise the fire could have swept out across the fertile hills before any mages adept in controlling the spread could arrive.

“Greenfather’s teeth, that’s a gruesome sight,” the captain of the guard company muttered, shading her eyes as she gazed down the road. A small company of ten men followed her and the apprentice mage, and none of them looked happy about the view either.

“It could be worse,” Hidelbert said, shrouding his own eyes as he frowned. The more he looked, the less it seemed like the fallow fields had shielded the town. No, this was a calculated burst of some kind—not likely a fireball or a firestorm, but there was enough destruction that fire had been part of it. It was too controlled.

The sinking feeling in his gut grew. The College had sent him out here because the Queen had thought the destruction suspicious. It wouldn’t be out of line for a mage of a neighboring kingdom to come here and stir up trouble, no matter that they’d been at peace for two centuries now. When it came to analyzing the patterns and practices of magic, Hidelbert was the best at the College. It was the reason they were loathe to let him go, no matter that he had no innate magic of his own.

Of course, if there _ was _ a rival mage around, that could be problematic. But that was why there were guards at his back; as long as he kept the mage’s power under control, they could handle the messy work of putting them down.

“Aye, could be that,” the captain grunted, before waving her men forward. “We’ll know better once we get there. Think they had a rogue mage come in to fight their local witch?”

“In these hills? Small towns like these aren’t fond of magic. They have a bad history with it. More likely that the mage, whoever they were, took advantage of that fact.” The road was rutted from wagon wheels over the years, but some effort had gone into keeping it maintained. The docile mare Hidelbert was riding wasn’t terribly happy about heading towards the smell of smoke, but she placed her hooves with care as he navigated around the worst of the mud.

The rain storm might have helped dampen the fires too. The small, localized, very brief rainstorm. One which hadn’t been visible until a day after the smoke, and never moved away from this area. It had dissipated before he’d been able to catch sight of it, but Hidelbert worried anyways.

Rogue mage? Or something more complicated?

Most of the buildings in town had been burnt to their foundations, the stone walls collapsing inwards. Some of them had detonated outwards instead, scattering their heavy bricks across the ground and slamming them into neighboring buildings. There were bodies everywhere, in various states of decay, many of them burned to husks that crumbled and broke under the slightest pressure. The party reached the barely standing remains of the mayor’s home, the land in front of it used most often for grazing small animals. It had been untouched by fire, somehow.

They tethered their horses, and then began their terrible work.

The feeling of dread only grew as Hidelbert carefully walked the boundaries of the town, examining the ruins of the buildings. The guards were doing their best to identify the remains, despite the difficulty of the task, but even they had figured out that this was not a natural cause. He could see the way the captain kept glancing around, trying to spot the enemy mage wherever they were. There was no good way to tell her that the rogue wasn’t going to make an appearance, wielding a magic staff made of bone and cackling like mad.

This wasn’t the work of some cruel, capricious monster, buoyed up by the knowledge that they wielded power beyond the comprehension of mortal men. Hidelbert had seen something like this once before, in the city—the detonated buildings, the strange bare areas that went untouched, the bodies that were torched far beyond what normal fire could manage. That time, the mage in question had been taken to the gaol when they refused to learn control. He hoped desperately that it wouldn’t be the case this time too.

It was a cry for help gone disastrously wrong.

“Gods, please still be in the area,” he whispered as he rounded the backside of the village pub. Here the ground had gone black and glassy, like the dirt had been fused together from the sheer heat. It was also where the worst of the damage was. The village pub didn’t even have foundation stones anymore, and whatever the buildings were that sat around it, they had been completely destroyed too.

Curiously, the well that sat in the little courtyard between buildings was untouched. Hidelbert approached it warily, fingering the alert talisman he’d been given by his advisor before heading out. It wouldn’t save him, but it would tell the woman exactly what had happened to him should he die out here. That information could save a lot of people—or damn one in specific.

He peered over the edge of the well, then swore and stepped back. “Captain! I need a rope over here, we have a survivor.”

* * *

Johannes was, like most of the people in this region of the kingdom, pale-skinned and freckled, with hair that haloed ominously red around his head. He was also stick-thin and petrified, clearly adult but uncomprehending of the nature of the investigation, and he let out a reedy wail of despair when he caught a glimpse of the village around the guard captain’s attempt to block his sight. He’d managed to rouse long enough to give his name and his relationship to the owner of the pub—the man’s nephew, orphaned young—before collapsing into tears and incomprehensible sobbing.

The guards wrote the reaction off as stress and nothing more, and concluded that there were no other survivors. When Hidelbert volunteered to have the young man ride with him, none of them even considered that he might have an underlying motive.

With Johannes’s frail body tucked firmly in the curve of his own and his mare content to follow the lead of the guards ahead of her, Hidelbert was free to think. And oh, he was thinking; he’d already contacted his advisor and warned her ahead of time, along with his speculation that the attack was unintended. She’d agreed with him, and also agreed to try and pave the way for leniency once they got to the city under the stipulation that Hidelbert keep his charge firmly under control. After all, if there was anyone in the College that could do so, it would be him.

In theory, the College of Thaumaturgy was open to anyone. As long as one was willing to dedicate themselves to the study of magic, the College was willing to admit them. The problem, of course, came in advancing later on; the College operated more like a trade than they were willing to admit, with the Dean a functional Guildmaster and the mages underneath him ranked and styled based upon their applicable ability and practical applications of skill.

There were the Masters, which encompassed both the professors and a number of the highest ranking mages in the kingdom, many of whom served the Crown if they chose not to remain in study at the College. These were the elites who had not only studied, often for almost a decade by the time they attained their Mastery, but had proven themselves worthy of the title via great works of magecraft or great contributions to the kingdom itself. Many of them were knighted. All of them were experts with their given craft.

Underneath them, and encompassing most of those the populace considered ‘mages’, were the Journeymen. These young men and women were allowed to find their own places to live outside of the College, having proven themselves capable of doing magecraft to a level that could be allowed into the public. Most of them did, in fact, journey, much like their artisan peers, and many of them filled the halls of far-flung towns and trading cities, the better to both aid their nonmagical counterparts as well as deliver information back to the capital.

The students of the College were two distinct groups: those that were simply too young to engage in the rigorous study of magic and had to attain control over their innate abilities first, and the newly-minted adults who had proved themselves able and willing to study beyond simple control. No person with magic was forced to study, though all children with it were taught control—either at the College, or under the trusted eye of a journeyman mage with experience in such things. But Apprentices were those that _ wanted _ to study, those that thirsted for knowledge beyond what simple exercises could give, those that saw magic and wished to know it inside and out.

Hidelbert was the last, for almost a decade now. Most apprentices graduated into journeyman status within five years, at most as many as seven, depending on their level of innate skill. Almost all mages tended to stay as journeymen, which was fine; they received a small stipend from the College if they worked on public affairs, and could hire out to anyone with coin should they choose. To have an apprentice stuck in that position after nine years was almost unheard of, just as it was nigh unheard of to take an apprentice into the College at eighteen. Most mages had come into the College halls long before then, as children or at the decreed age of sixteen when they were considered adults.

But in many ways, he was a unique case. When it came down to it, Hidelbert had no skill for magic at all. No inner fire, no burning core that formed the heart of his spells, no light buried deep in his chest for him to access. It baffled every mage that sought to help him—he wasn’t simply unmagical, in the way most people were, where his core of power was too weak to truly nurture. He was nearly _ anti_magical, an empty desert where most people at least had a few wildflowers blooming, the rocky plain next to the thriving forests of his magical peers. Some of them wondered if he was secretly dead.

Were it not for the desire he had to _ learn_, he would have been kicked out long ago. Were it not for the fact that he was, in fact, the _ only _ expert the College had on the finer nuances of thaumaturgical fields and the massive web of power that mages accessed both within and without themselves, he would have been gently let go. But the fact of the matter was, Hidelbert had an odd but irreplaceable ability to take the energy of other mages and bind it down, rework it into a harmless shape.

Any mage could do it, in theory. The trick was making sure that channeled fire didn’t ignite their own magical center beyond their ability to handle. Typically, it was only Master mages that tried.

But Hidelbert—Hidelbert was a barren wasteland, and there was no wick in his soul to burn too bright or too hot. The younger children, the worried mages who’d taken sick and couldn’t contain themselves, the Masters who needed someone to handle magical runoff, all of them eventually turned to him. He couldn’t ascend beyond the ranks of apprentice by the rules and restrictions of the College, but he could make himself the most damnably useful apprentice around.

And that brought him back to the problem of Johannes. Because most mages had to nurture that small flame inside them, building it over the years until it was a warm hearth. The Masters, those that had a particular skill or dedication when it came to magic, could build them into infernos, into bonfires, into impressive displays that would take groups of five or more journeymen to emulate. But then there were some mages that were born as wildfires, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, burning themselves out before they even realized they were capable of doing so.

They were called adepts, and they were rightly feared when they went untrained. Lucky ones were born into mage families and sent to the College young, to learn control well above the level of their peers. Lucky ones eventually became Masters, set in the service of the Crown and lavished with praise and envy. Lucky ones were found early, before their emotional outbursts could have casualties attached.

Johannes was not a lucky one.

The young man in question jolted awake again when they reached an inn, the guard captain heading in ahead of them all to get rooms. Most of the time, they’d camp outdoors, but she’d agreed with Hidelbert that a warm place to sleep was important for the sole survivor of that town. He only hoped that seeing the inn wouldn’t trigger unpleasant memories for the poor bastard.

“Shh,” Hidelbert whispered in his ear, nudging his mare further away from the guards so that dismounting would be easier. That it gave them some privacy too was simply a bonus. “I know you have magic, and I know you’re scared. That’s natural. But you need to stay calm, Johannes. I can control the magic, but you need to control _ yourself_.”

He got only a soft whimper in response, but the kindling of fire he’d felt in the web of power around them faded. Too fast, it faded. The heavy weight in his gut returned with a vengeance, because that wasn’t the slow grounding of power that a mage in control would do, it was the rapid tamping down of a pressurized bomb ready to blow again.

Damn and blast, but Hidelbert had a good idea what might have caused this. If Johannes was afraid of himself—and hadn’t he told the captain that the people of the hills were suspicious of magic?—then he would have spent all these years ruthlessly destroying any hint of it in him. That kind of self-loathing wasn’t healthy. Worse, it was like letting undergrowth build up, layers and layers of kindling until the slightest spark would send the whole kingdom up in a blaze. He should have come to the capital a long time ago, but he _ hadn’t_, and now Hidelbert was stuck with an adept that had no control or even a sense of the depth of his power.

Some fools might say that it was lucky Johannes had gone so long without incident, but Hidelbert disagreed. Had he presented earlier, he might have gotten help before it was this bad. As it was now, he dreaded the idea that Johannes might not be able to control the magic at _ all_.

No way to tell yet, of course. He’d have to get Johannes into a less stressful situation and teach him the basics of grounding first. If he was willing to _ learn_, if he was willing to _ try_, then Hidelbert might yet be able to save him; even if an adept couldn’t ever learn basic grounding and then live a normal life, as long as Johannes was willing to put in the minimum effort, the College could make him comfortable.

Hidelbert hoped desperately that Johannes was willing to try. He didn’t want to sentence another young man, whose only crime was being born in the wrong place, to death.

Keeping a firm grip on Johannes’s arm, he steered them into the inn. The young man trembled beside him, anxiety spiking as they entered the main room, but the corresponding surge of magic flowed straight into Hidelbert’s skin and went nowhere else. He stopped to ask the captain to have food sent up to their room, and got directions to which one was his (as the rest of the men would have to bed out in the stables, there not being enough room for all of them), then steered Johannes up the steps to the quiet safety of a locked door.

Even once they were inside, he didn’t let go. Hidelbert could capture the flow of magic even without keeping a hand on Johannes, but it was easier to smooth the spikes out as long as they had skin-to-skin contact.

“Right,” he said, blowing out a sigh as he met the fearful blue of Johannes’s eyes, “this is a bit of a mess. My name is Hidelbert. I’m an apprentice at the College of Thaumaturgy, in the capital. I can keep your magic from hurting anyone, so you need not fear a repeat of the incident at the village. Now tell me: what _ happened_?”

Johannes breathed in, trembling harder, but he didn’t cry. Hadn’t, from the very beginning. As fearful as he was, he was doing his best to hide it, like he’d been trying to hide his magic. Oh, how Hidelbert wished he’d known what lead to this.

“My aunt took me in when my parents died,” he said, no hint of the tremble in his sweet tenor. “I was very young, too young to remember them. But she was sickly, and died not many years later, leaving only my uncle and I to run the pub. And things… happened, around me. Ill-luck things. So I tried to hide it, even though I was clumsy and an idiot in everything else too and—my uncle, he made sure I couldn’t do any of my ill-wishing around other people. And he was—I was very angry and he was—and then I couldn’t control it anymore even though I was _ trying _ and—”

Hidelbert tugged the young man closer, wrapping his arms around Johannes tight enough that he could feel the tremors down to his bones. The flow of magic in the room went wild for a second, but he was a deep, empty basin, ready to be filled. With no direction behind it, all of Johannes’s magic found the path of least resistance and flowed into him.

“It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault, Johannes.” He shut his eyes, silently cursing the insular, fearful hill-folk that didn’t trust magic and didn’t trust men from the capital. So much death that could’ve been avoided, if the damned uncle had just admitted what Johannes was and sent him out for training instead of trying to beat it out of him.

After a long moment, he felt Johannes wrap his own thin, bony arms around his waist. The young man’s grip was fearfully tight, but he still didn’t cry, only hid his hot face against Hidelbert’s shoulder and let himself be held. Like this, the magic wasn’t even tempted to spill anywhere else. If nothing else, Hidelbert could keep him safe for others to be around.

A quiet knock at the door announced the captain, who gave him an odd look before setting food down on the table in the room. She opened her mouth before looking at Johannes’s face and reconsidering. With a shake of her head, she said, “We’ll talk in the morning. Should be clear weather to the capital, maybe a full day of travel at most.”

“Thank you. He’ll ride with me the whole trip over.” He met her eyes, saw the question there, and nodded. Her lips thinned, but the captain wasn’t hill-folk—she knew that, often as not, incidents like this weren’t the fault of the mage anymore so than the weather was the fault of the village headman. 

“Well enough, then.” She didn’t ask him any questions, only kissed her fingertips and made the gesture for luck before leaving the room. She was a good woman, rigid in her morals but willing enough to understand that not everyone abided by them. Not every guard captain would have been so gracious.

Hidelbert sighed, then rubbed Johannes’s back briskly and started to untangle himself. “Come on. You need food, and I expect it’s been some days since you’ve had any. Your body can subsist on its own fire, but that’s not good for it—it’s no wonder your so thin. And _ I _ definitely need a hot meal after all that riding.”

Johannes was clearly reluctant to let go, but eventually, he did. It only took a little more coaxing to get him to eat, Hidelbert’s hand resting on his shoulder the whole while. When he wasn’t panicking, the adept was very effective at shoving his power so deep that it didn’t show. Even if a journeyman mage had passed through, they might not have realized just what they were looking at.

He mulled over the problem of that as they got ready for bed, bowls and plates left by the door for a maid. When they fell into bed together, Johannes was out in a moment, bony body tucked close to Hidelbert’s as he hogged all the blankets too.

What a mess.

* * *

After sleep, food, and a promise that he couldn’t hurt anyone while Hidelbert was touching him, Johannes was livelier on the trip the next day. He’d confessed to never riding before now and approached the horses with a wariness that gave truth to that fact, but once the group had fallen into the steady, ground-eating trot, and he’d figured out how to stop bouncing on Hidelbert’s tolerant mare, he relaxed some.

Still, Hidelbert figured that both Johannes and his borrowed mare would be happy to see the end of each other. And as long as Johannes was concentrating on riding properly, he wasn’t able to panic about what he’d done, or what fate awaited him in the city.

That served Hidelbert’s purposes just fine. Once again, Johannes’s power was dormant, no hint of it rising to the surface, but enough of it had soaked into his own skin that he could use it to boost the signal of his communication stone. It was out of time for him to be contacting his advisor—the real reason why he rarely tried without her on the other end to hold the brunt of the signal herself—but he felt it better to give her a warning. The College had to be prepared, and she needed to be on his side if Johannes was going to live.

“_And you’re bringing him straight to the main building? _” she asked, her voice ringing in his head.

“_Yes_,” he replied, silent on the exterior. It had taken time for him to learn how to cast his thoughts like a voice, especially since he had no innate ability to do so, but it was a useful skill. Especially given the fact that he was often sent out on oddities like this; it was just rare for an adept to be the magical thing in question.

“_We’ll have to figure out where he stays. The children’s dorms are warded, but he’s a bit old to be tucked into a bedroom with three ten year olds,_” she said, her mental voice wry and colored with overtones of exhaustion. An adept at the College was a big deal, especially an untrained one. The rest of the faculty must have been up all night discussing the problem.

Well, he could set one thing to rest, at least. “_He’ll stay with me. It’s safer for everyone that way, and should anyone seek revenge for the lost village, they’d have to figure out which suite is mine_.”

“_A sensible solution to multiple problems. Very well. Should we pull you off of your usual teaching schedule? If you can teach him control, that would make teaching him the rest far easier._”

“_If that’s what you’d prefer. To be honest, I’m not even sure how deep his power goes. He’s too good at repressing when he isn’t having an outburst, and he’s too afraid of himself to truly let go. I have no idea whether our usual wards would hold_.” Hidelbert’s mouth twisted grimly, but with Johannes facing front and the guards occupied with their own discussion, no one noticed. “_I think it would be better if I focused exclusively on him. Whatever event triggered this, I have no desire to repeat the outcome._”

“_Aye, and you’re not the only one_.” Her mind flickered away, distant but not dropping the connection. He waited patiently, and a few minutes later, she returned. “_He’ll stay with you and we’re reserving one of the closer workrooms to your suite for your exclusive use. Term’s not set to start for another two weeks, so you’ll have time to settle him in before the madhouse of students descends on us again_.”

“_Should I bring him back to my rooms first, or do you want to meet him? _”

“_I want a nap, Hidelbert. Settle him in, get proper food into you both, maybe take a bath. Once we’ve all caught up on our sleep, we’ll arrange a proper meeting time. The Dean himself wants to keep an eye on this personally._” And then, without any fanfare, the connection dropped. Mariska was like that, though. Not a wasted second when she didn’t need to, no matter what the rules of courtesy were.

Shaking his head slightly, Hidelbert smoothed his expression out. Johannes was still intent on trying to ride properly, unaware that a conversation about him had been happening. Good. Some Masters could pluck words out of the thoughts of those they touched, and he hadn’t been sure if that skill extended to adepts as well.

Looking up past his charge, he called, “Captain! How long ‘til we reach the city, would you say?”

She craned her head back and lifted a hand to shield her eyes, apparently measuring the distance between landmarks she recognized. “Perhaps an hour, maybe less. We’ll get there in due time, mage, no worries.”

He didn’t correct her on that.

Instead, he occupied himself with planning out a loose schedule for when they arrived. Better for them to avoid the bulk of the city, because Johannes had never left his small village and his control was nonexistent—the casualties would be obscene if he slipped Hidelbert’s leash in a busy marketplace. Thankfully, with the College designed so that apprentices and students could get anything they needed within the walls, that was a challenge he could put off for some time.

So getting his own packs to his bedroom, finding the reserved workroom, and then… Clothes first, since Johannes had nothing to call his own right now, _ then _ food. And once he was fed and no longer wearing things that smelled like the catastrophe he’d caused, Johannes might relax enough to let himself be taken to the baths. They were likely nothing like he’d ever seen before, but they should be relatively alone at that time. Eating and settling in would take them over the usual hour everyone else rushed for a bath.

When the high walls of the city finally came into view, the guards and horses both picked up the pace, eager to be within them. Most of their travel companions broke off shortly within the gate, but the captain was kind enough to ride with him the whole way to the College. Johannes’s attention was no longer on his riding, so Hidelbert appreciated the help, turning his _ own _ attention to smoothing the eddies of power that kept surging as Johannes was startled and fascinated by the city in turns.

She saluted and left them off at the College gates, and Hidelbert gave her a proper salute back. One of the many workers who maintained the College grounds and helped served the academically-minded populace took the rented mare along with a silver for his efforts, while Hidelbert hefted his bags and wrapped an arm around his charge’s shoulders.

“We’ll get you settled in my room first,” he said, setting a brisk pace across the sweeping and beautiful courtyard, paths cutting through maintained gardens as old trees obscured the College buildings that branched off into a five-pointed star.

“I’m staying with you?” Johannes asked, though thankfully it was a curious tone rather than a fearful one.

“Aye, it’ll be easier that way. Until you’ve learned how to ground yourself, I need to be touching you; unfortunately, now that the seal on your power has been broken, it’ll be harder for you to suppress it the way you have been.” Hidelbert grimaced faintly, realizing he would have to break that habit as well. Easier in a child than in an adult man. “Well, it’ll also give you a better room than the dorms the children stay in, so there’s that too. You don’t mind sharing a bed?”

There was an odd look in Johannes’s eyes as he tipped his head to stare up at Hidelbert’s face, his halo of hair floating in the soft breeze. “No, I don’t mind. I—Are _ you _ sure you wouldn’t mind having me in your room? I don’t… I don’t want to be a bother.”

“You are _ not _ a bother,” Hidelbert said firmly. That was something else he intended to nip in the bud, whatever the poor young man’s trauma might be. A nonmagical man might be able to cringe his way through life, but an adept couldn’t afford that sort of self-deprecation.

Since Johannes didn’t seem to have a response for that, they finished walking through the courtyard in silence. It was just past noon now, the trees providing enough shade that the sunlight wasn’t overbearing, and without the mass of students attending, there were no crowds to fight through. There was no better way to experience the College for the first time, really. Like this, it wasn’t just a place of learning, it was a place of _ safety_, of comfort, of serenity in the winding gardens and vaulted halls.

“This is the main hall,” Hidelbert said as they stepped through a side door set away from the massive oakwood entrance that would remain locked until the term started. “The library is in the west wing along with archives and the exam rooms, while the dining halls and kitchens are in the east wing. Dining times are more rigid during the term, but outside of term the kitchens are mostly wound down and faculty is expected to figure themselves out—as long as it’s simple, most of the cooks remaining on the premises are willing to make it for you. The auditorium is that way, and the stairs are this way. Faculty has their offices above the library, along with the reserved training rooms, and our rooms are above the kitchens.”

Johannes nodded, dazed but obedient as he followed Hidelbert through the massive building. The College of Thaumaturgy was a smaller branch on the Royal University tree, but it was well separate of most of the University’s other Colleges. Given how often magical accidents happened in the early days, it was for the best, and given the general wealth of other University students, it was better for _ Johannes_.

There had yet to be a time when Hidelbert had enjoyed interacting with any of the other learned men of the nation; far better to spend his time with the mages, who at least took in _ everyone _ regardless of whether they could pay for the facilities. The generous donations of the many alumni who could manage it handled that.

“We’ll be up in this building most often. My advisor told me a room would be reserved for us, and that should be—ah, here, perfect. And my rooms are rather close to the stairs, given that it’s a bit draftier in the winter, so it will be a bit of a walk but not intolerable.” Noting the location of their assigned workroom, Hidelbert tugged Johannes further down the hallway, heading to his—their—bedroom.

“So we don’t actually have to leave this building?” Johannes said, sounding baffled. Coming from a village small enough to fit in this building along probably didn’t help the shock of his changing situation.

“Well, not quite. The baths are in the building to the southwest, closest to the gate and the stables. It’s also the dormitories for the adult apprentices and those journeymen that choose to stay here—there’s not many of them, but some of them take a term or two before they have a life path set out.” He nudged the door open, finally letting Johannes go once they were both inside and setting his bags down.

The magic around the adept surged for a second, then slowly evened out again, his calm returning as he inspected Hidelbert’s modest apartment. The bed was big enough for two, though barely, and there was a desk shoved against one wall with a bookcase beside it. A small seating area clustered around the window, and a smaller table sat next to the door for any dishes or items he needed washed. It was the room a very minor professor might have, or a particularly well-favored teaching assistant who’d chosen to stay on after getting their journeyman’s papers. With his unique position in the framework of the College, it was perfect for Hidelbert.

Of course, it might not be perfect for both of them _ together_. Depending on how many wordly items Johannes accumulated, space could fill up swiftly. And that wasn’t even considering wardrobe—the dresser at the foot of the bed was fine for Hidelbert’s trousers and shirts, a hook over the back of the door for his jacket, but he’d need to get another for Johannes and that was a decent amount of space gone with that alone.

Though if he set it against the wall opposite of his own, and perhaps put cushions on them both, it could be a cozy seating arrangement…

“It’s very big,” Johannes said breathlessly, his eyes huge in his delicate face. “My old room could fit in it three times.”

“It suits me. I don’t know if I’ll have anything that will fit you well, but we can have your clothing laundered, and I can always pay the staff to work you up a good set of clothes. I get a stipend, you see, but I rarely need to use it.” He flipped up the top of his dresser and moved the folded weights of his clothes around, eventually digging out a set from when he’d still been on the far end of a growth spurt, his limbs as thin and reedy as Johannes was now.

“Are—are you sure that won’t be a problem? I can work to pay you back, or—” Johannes cut himself off, biting his lip and taking the clothes handed to him. Sensing the surge of his magic rising with the anxiety, Hidelbert grabbed his bony wrist and held it firm.

“Once you’ve eaten, we’ll go to the baths,” he said, pitching his voice low and soothing, “and once we’ve gotten you clean, I’ll teach you how to ground your magic. _ That _ is your job right now, Johannes. To control yourself.”

Slowly, the young man nodded. It wasn’t perfect, because Hidelbert could feel the tension still bleeding into the flow of magic pushing under his own skin. Still, it would do for now. He was calming, and he trusted Hidelbert to lead him true. As long as they held that trust, everything would be okay.

He smiled and Johannes shyly, wonderfully, smiled back.

There were a few cooks in the kitchen to handle the young students who stayed over the break, and one of them was kind enough to make up a quick dinner for them both. Johannes devoured the basic stew and rolls with an eagerness that spoke of many years of poor eating—strange, for the nephew of the only innkeeper in the village. Even if his uncle was not well off, he would have had to keep plenty on hand to feed his patrons, and surely there would have been enough to spare for one growing young boy.

But then, there was the way Johannes’s collarbones jutted out, his bony elbows and bonier knees, the way the bones of his wrists were aristocratically fine and too visible for a young man of his station. Given the circumstances—_damn the hillfolk and their superstition around magic_—perhaps expecting his uncle to feed him was expecting too much of a bigoted old man.

Hidelbert didn’t let any of those thoughts show on his face, only kept his fingers resting on the inside of Johannes’s elbow while he ate with his other hand. The dishes they left at the kitchen again, praising the food highly as the cooks shooed them out, and then he was leading Johannes out of the building and through the courtyard, both of them carrying bundles of clothes under their arms.

The baths were separated by sex much like the rest of the dorms, not that it ever stopped tomfoolery between romantically inclined apprentices anyways, and Hidelbert lead them both to the men’s wing with strict instructions for Johannes to avoid the other one. He wouldn’t ever have reason to go wandering without Hidelbert anyways, but it was better for him to remember the route _ now_.

With the adult dorms empty, so were the baths—if his advisor’s opinion was indicative of the rest, most of the faculty would be catching up on their sleep right now. Hidelbert directed Johannes to set his clean clothes on a bench and leave the dirty ones below it, the easier to discern between the two. He also let go of Johannes’s arm to do so, watching him as he undressed to see the eddies in the magic around him.

There was a pattern emerging, though he’d prefer at least a week or two of study before he staked his reputation on it. Unfortunately, if they were to meet the Dean later, he wouldn’t have the time. So that meant this small pattern he could see would have to be the argument he made for keeping Johannes alive and well, proof that he could learn control.

As long as his attention was focused on something he could _ do_, something that presented no issue and gave him a thing to pour his attention into, his control didn’t falter. It wasn’t a good control, no, it was the thoughtless control of every child that came into the College, but it did exist. It was only when the anxiety struck, or stressful situations emerged, that the magic began to flare. It was only because he tried to force it down rather than ground it properly that it exploded.

He could be _ taught_, Hidelbert thought with something very like hope fluttering warm in his chest. If he could find the right words, if he could find the perfect method, if he could funnel off Johannes’s power for long enough, then perhaps he could make a mage out of this wayward adept. There would be no reason to execute him then.

Feeling much better about the prospect of the future, Hidelbert slid into the water with a sigh. A second later, he had to seize a wayward flare of power before it could shatter the tiles around the bath, slamming it into the deep, empty void of his soul until the source behind it finally faltered.

Johannes was very red when he slid into the water next to him, and his thin fingers curled tight around the meat of Hidelbert’s arm.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his control slipping again as the magic tried to run wild. With the heavy weight of Hidelbert’s internal desert sucking him dry, it didn’t have the chance to properly stretch its legs. But then, that was the whole point of his presence here.

“You know,” Hidelbert said, picking his words carefully, “I’m not a mage. It’s… a point of some contention around the College, actually.”

Sweet, fragile Johannes looked up at him with those blue eyes of his, and Hidelbert’s breath caught on the sheer _ trust _ in them. “But you said you were faculty? I thought this was a—a mage college?”

“It is. Which is part of the problem. You see I don’t _ have _ magic, in a way that’s more…” He trailed off, tried to find a way to describe it that would make sense to a layman. “Say that a mage is someone who can see color, and that a person with _ potential _ for magic can only see one or two. Those unmagical people who can’t become mages, they have no sight at all.”

“Okay,” Johannes said, though it was clear that he wasn’t quite sure where this was going. “So you were born magic blind?”

“In this instance, I was born without a head at all.” He smiled at the faintly affronted look Johannes gave him, as if the comparison was an insult that the young man wouldn’t stand to hear. It was very kind of him, really.

“So you can’t do magic at all, no matter what you do, there’s not even a sense to heal?” he asked, the gears in his mind clearly turning as he worked through the problem Hidelbert was describing.

“Correct, but in the sense that I’m a hole for magic to fill. It’s more than the fact that I don’t have the potential for it—I can actually sense it quite well, really. It’s that I’m the empty basin waiting for the spring thaw, but there’s still a drain at the bottom of me, and it can never be filled.” Hidelbert smiled wider as the faint offense turned quite real, something hard and unyielding entering Johannes’s eyes.

“You are _ not _ empty,” he said, jabbing one bony finger into the center of Hidelbert’s chest.

“It’s the best way to describe what I do to magic. And it means that I’m like you, but in the opposite direction. If you’re an endless fount, I’m a bottomless well. Do you see?” Carefully, he took Johannes’s hand and squeezed it, trying not to think of all the places where their bodies were pressed together.

Some of the offense bled out of Johannes, though there was a hint of steel in his eyes still. It was a good sign, even if Hidelbert wasn’t certain how to take the way it only showed up in defense of _ himself_. Perhaps Johannes didn’t need a protector so much as he needed a focus.

He could be that. “We match. You’re safe here, no matter what else happens.”

Eventually, Johannes sighed and the last hint of tension left him. His puff of red hair was warm as he rested his cheek on Hidelbert’s shoulder, their fingers still twined in the water. “Alright. If you say so.”

* * *

The problem, the _ real _ problem, wasn’t that Johannes didn’t want to learn control; he wanted, more than anything in the world, to have control. The problem was that he seemed utterly incapable of it, having traumatized himself too thoroughly in regards to his own magic. All the careful training in the nation might not be enough to help him unlearn that instinctive, terrified urge to shove the magic _ down _ rather than twist it into something usable.

But, Hidelbert told both himself and the rest of the faculty whenever the subject was raised, he’d learned to ground properly so there _ wouldn’t _be a repeat of the village. That was enough to satisfy the letter of the law, and it was proof that Johannes was trying his very best, that he wasn’t actively a danger to the Crown or to her people. While the castle officials were not terribly happy with that response, the rest of the faculty agreed with him. Mariska was handling the nonmages for him for now, though not without a joke or ten about Johannes being his Masterwork.

A joke, yes. A joke that might have a kernel of truth in it, if he stopped to consider that.

Right now, Johannes was in front of him in the workroom, sweat beading on his pale brow as he tried to focus the raging inferno under his skin into a small candlelight resting on his palm. These rooms had been warded by hundreds of mages over the years, Masters and adepts both. One rogue student couldn’t possibly do any damage to them, no matter how strong, and that meant they were a safe place for Johannes to get a feel for his magic when it wasn’t being actively suppressed, by himself or by Hidelbert.

In the normal way of things, a student was taught control by a junior journeyman mage, and apprentice had that control refined with group work supervised by a senior journeyman mage, and then any journeymen who wished to strive for mastery were overseen by the Master advisors they appealed to in the College. There were exceptions, of course—Hidelbert was one, with his uncanny void of magic, and it made him uniquely able to handle youthful and out of control young mages. But even in the old accounts of adepts who had come before him, none were taught control in one of these rooms with anything _ less _ than five Masters who had skill in shieldwork.

Then again, no other adept had been found over the age of fifteen before; puberty seemed to be the point where most of them were either found by passing mages or consumed violently by their own power. Johannes had avoided the latter only barely, and had the bad luck to never experience the former. If Hidelbert had not been the one to find him, he had the sickening feeling that Johannes would never have lived long enough to come to the College in the first place.

The feel of magic in the room surged abruptly, making his ears pop with the sudden pressure change, and then Johannes let out a startled cry and started shaking his hands.

“You almost had it for a second,” Hidelbert told him, leaning back in the simple wooden chair that was the only furniture in the room. Sometimes it was better furnished, but with all of his focus on diverting Johannes’s power away from _ himself_, he had no ability to make sure the furniture was safe.

“I don’t think I did,” Johannes shot back, his sweet voice frustrated though all the frustration was turned inwards.

With a soft sigh, Hidelbert stood, stretching his long limbs out. He could see the way the magic tried to thread around Johannes’s fingers, the way all his lessons about manipulating the flow of magic had taken root and yet… Perhaps the problem was that Hidelbert couldn’t tell him how to harness the blaze in his soul because he didn’t _ have _ one himself, but the rest of the Masters in residence were taking a hands off approach to the problem of Johannes. He wasn’t a prodigy in need of more skilled education, and it would take five of them to do what only one of Hidelbert could do. So for now, his own inadequate instruction would have to do.

But he understood the frustration, especially when it _ seemed _ like Johannes had done everything right and simply lost grip at the very last second. There was always a moment of hesitation, like he stood at the edge of a cliff and the power plunged past him in a waterfall rather than a controlled stream.

They’d been at it for weeks. It was time to try something different.

“Alright, start the exercise again,” he said, coming around behind Johannes and resting his hands on the young man’s shoulders. After a month of feeding him up, the bones no longer protruded out from his skin, but it was likely that Johannes would always be slender. Guiltily, Hidelbert thought that might not be a bad thing.

With a soft noise of annoyance, Johannes did, pulling up the firestorm of his power and trying to thread it out into smaller, workable tendrils. Now that Hidelbert was touching him, he could see where everything was going wrong—it wasn’t that Johannes didn’t have the skill or the gumption, because he did. The problem was that the channels of power, usually flexible around a mage’s will, had been gouged open over the years of suppression, the backflow of power from Johannes’s concerted efforts at suppressing it destroying his ability to tighten his grip at all. He was forced wide open, with only two states: grounded and sealed for safety, or lit up like an unchecked forest fire. 

In truth, that meant that Johannes should be put down for the safety of everyone—all it would take was one time for his control to slip and disaster to strike again, even if he was perfectly capable and willing to ground his power _ properly _ now. And yet, Hidelbert couldn’t stand the idea. He wouldn’t let another young man die, especially not _ this _ one.

Instead of letting the same thing happen again, a surge of power that startled Johannes into shutting it all down, Hidelbert seized the power as it flowed out. He might not have any magic of his own, and he might not have much _ practical _ experience, but he was still the best damn thaumaturgist that have ever stepped into these halls. Theory could take him _ anywhere_.

The power steadied, split, flowed into Johannes’s palms and formed a perfectly stable candlelight.

“Oh,” he breathed, his red curls lit up by the glow. There was a sparkle in his eyes that might almost be tears, and Hildelbert stopped looking at him to focus on the magic he’d shaped. _ They _ had shaped.

“I think we’ve found the solution to your problem.” His own face lit up with a crooked smile, fingers curled carefully around Johannes’s wrists. At some point in the working, he’d half wrapped himself around the smaller man, aided by his own larger frame. It was an alarmingly comfortable position to be in, considering that he ought not be enjoying it at all.

“I didn’t know magic could be like this,” Johannes said, voice soft. His fingers curled, his intentions clear in the way the power surged in those blasted open channels of his, and Hidelbert let the candlelight flare up just a little before banking it again.

Now that he knew the problem, they could work around it. Ten years of study, ten years of examining the inner workings of magic as all his peers moved past him, and finally Hidelbert had the chance to do some good with it. 

Of course, the problem was getting the _ rest _ of the faculty to agree. Not to mention the Crown, should word of Johannes’s problem reach the Queen’s ears.

“Absolutely not,” Mariska told him later that day, when Johannes was fast asleep in their shared room. Hidelbert had taken the chance to leave, since an adept was as safe as they ever could be while asleep, and this was a conversation he’d rather not have with Johannes around to hear.

“It could work, though.” He was being stubborn, he knew that, but there was something in Johannes that spoke to him in a way that he’d never felt before. He couldn’t let that slip through his fingers.

“Aye, it _ could_, but what makes you think the rest of the faculty would agree to it? That’s been a core tenet of the College from the very beginning, every young mage must learn control of _ himself _ before he can be allowed into the study of greater magic. An adept—”

“Had absolutely no choice in the matter, and has learned control enough to stop himself from exploding again. If he were a normal child, that would be where we ended it. It’s _ only _ because he’s an adept that he’s being asked to do more.” Hidelbert leaned back in his chair with a sigh of frustration, ruffling his fingers through his hair. “If the College and the Crown wants him to do more, than this is the only option. You know me, Mariska. I can control him.”

She scowled, but it wasn’t directed at him. With her grey hair and sharp features, she looked not unlike a falcon stooping on its prey, her clever mind focused on the problem he’d given her. “Well enough then, you _ can_, but you must know that not everyone is happy with me keeping _ you _ on. This is going to tweak their noses something fierce, and you’d best be able to prove that it can work.”

“I can do that,” he said, sitting straighter. If she was willing to throw herself behind this crazy idea, then that meant she thought he had a reasonable chance of success.

“I mean it, Hidelbert. I might joke about this being your masterwork, but if you can get an adept’s power under rein for the Crown, they might very well promote you up without making you take a journeyman’s section. And if you fail…” She trailed off meaningfully, then sighed and thumped her elbows on her desk, chin propped in her hands. “This means you’re probably not coming back to teaching the little ones too, doesn’t it. If we could have _ five _ of you, it would be perfect.”

“Maybe that should be our next project: figuring out how to make more dead men walking.” He grinned at her, but his heart was pounding frantically. They had a chance. It might be their only one, but they had a chance.

* * *

Johannes looked a lot like he had the day Hidelbert had found him, sick with fear and trembling, but at least this time he didn’t look hungry and filthy as well. His clothes were neat and well-fitting, perfectly serviceable fabrics if not especially fashionable ones, and his red curls had been tamed into a tight braid that hung just over the nape of his neck. If he couldn’t affect Hidelbert’s usual sense of ease, at least he’d look professional while in the middle of a panic attack.

“It will be fine,” Hidelbert told him, chafing Johannes’s pale hands between his own. It spoke of how much Johannes had grown in the few months Hidelbert had known him that the eddies of magic swirling around them both didn’t spike with anxiety. Despite his fear, he was keeping his magic firmly under control.

Not repressed, but properly_ grounded_. If nothing else, then his control here ought to show the other professors that he wasn’t a threat. Hidelbert held that fact close to his heart and let it soothe his own nervousness about the upcoming defense.

A masterwork couldn’t merely exist, it had to be judged worthy by the rest of those capable of creating them. This was true with all the other artisans in the city, and it was true with the College; a masterwork of magic was somewhere between a perfect piece of craftsmanship and a rigorously built thesis. WIth that in mind, any prospective journeyman trying to attain his mastery would have to defend it—first to a tribunal of other Masters within the College, then to the rest of the Master mages who chose to come test the merits of his magical practice. This was the preliminary stage, where they would know whether their proposal was dead in the water.

But Hidelbert knew that if they succeeded here, no one else in the kingdom would be able to say they _ couldn’t _ do it. It was simply a matter of taking theory and applying it in practice. He’d gotten very good at that over the years.

“We just have to go into the room, show them the magic we can do, and then tell them how we did it.” His hands slid up, gripped Johannes’s forearms firmly before pulling him close and pressing their foreheads together. “You won’t have to talk much, and we’ve practiced this a dozen times before.”

“Right.” Johannes nodded, squeezing his eyes shut tight, then sucked in a sharp breath and forced himself to let it out slowly. “It will be fine.”

“That’s the spirit,” Hidelbert said, letting himself smile with an ease he couldn’t quite feel. Years of disappointment had become a comfortable blanket after so long. The idea of even _ trying _ to rise above his station was both thrilling and terrifying all at once.

Still, this was more than an opportunity for him—it was a matter of life and death for Johannes, even if Hidelbert hadn’t said it in so many words. If the Crown came for him, Hidelbert intended to be in the way, but there wasn’t much a single man void of magic could actually do against them. Better to use his skills here and now, where they would actually be useful.

“We’d better not be late,” he said after a minute, pulling away. Johannes let him, only their fingers twining together as they left the bedroom and headed for the stairs. Their testing hall was further into the building than he’d taken Johannes before, near the rest of the assembly rooms; given the rambunctiousness of the usual students returning for term, neither of them had attended the presentations throughout the semester. 

But now the finals were over, another break for the month of worship beginning again, and it was only them moving through the empty corridors of the main building. Mariska was waiting for them outside the hall, looking terribly neat and terribly disappointed that she couldn’t be in the room with them. Given that she’d helped him refine exactly the kind of presentation they were going to do, Hidelbert couldn’t blame her.

“You’re going to show me this after you’re done in there,” she said, and it wasn’t a request. A truer smile spread over Hidelbert’s face, his fingers tightening.

“Of course we will,” Johannes replied for the both of them, nervous but getting steadier now with the reminder that someone else was in their corner. Privately, the Dean had told them both that he was interested to see their work once they’d won their defense, so with at least two of the faculty rooting for them, it meant there was hope.

“Only if you have food waiting for us. Magic’s hungry work, you know.” Hidelbert grinned at her as she scoffed, then opened the door and led Johannes in.

He knew most of the other Masters around the College by name and face, but these three were enigmas to him beyond that. Two taught routinely to the journeymen who chose to stay around the capital, focusing on the finer nuances of magic. The third was a traveler, he assumed, though his robes were gilded with the designs of Mastery anyways. Given that he was either on good terms with the rest of the faculty or considered a mostly worthless curiosity, the Dean must have weighed his choices carefully for neutral judges.

Despite the fact that he was firmly grounded, Johannes couldn’t help but twist and tangle the magical energy around him with anxiety. If this worked, he’d have to be in close proximity with other mages much more often, and he still regarded magic with a wariness that Hidelbert hadn’t been able to purge. His own was slowly becoming trustworthy, but that of others… Hillfolk predjudice ran deep, and given what magic had done to his unkind family, Hidelbert could understand why Johannes was afraid of it.

And yet.

And yet, for the first time, he was being taken seriously by the rest of the faculty. Not as a strange, uncanny creature that had its uses, not as an object to serve better than bothering another mage, but as a master of magic _ in his own right _ . His own heart was pounding almost perfectly to the cadence of Johannes’s pulse in the magic around them, but it wasn’t with the anxiety he’d expected. No, for once, Hidelbert was _ excited_.

Over a decade of trying to match the bare minimum even a child could do. A lifetime of grubby apprentice work in the family bakery before it, hoping every summer that the mages who passed through his bustling town would finally notice him. He’d dreamed of magic from the very first moment he could remember opening his eyes, and now, _ finally_, it was within his grasp.

“Thank you for giving us this opportunity,” he said, his heart in his throat and his fingers twisted tight where Johannes was squeezing them back. “Has the room been warded?”

Silly question, when he could feel it in the eddies and flows of magic between Johannes and the wall, but it was required all the same. The mage he didn’t know answered, “It has. You may begin at your leisure, apprentice.”

Apprentice, not journeyman, and yet. It was still a chance. Beside him, Johannes breathed in slow and careful, eyelids sliding shut as his delicate features settled into a frown of concentration. The flow of magic slowed, thrummed quietly as he drew his roots up from the space around him and—

One of the Masters sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of how the power came surging to the fore, uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Hidelbert let it simply come, let it flow into the deep basin he was born to be and readied the careful incantations they had practiced for weeks. A complex spell might be overreaching, but they had only one chance, and he _ knew _ Johannes had the power to handle it.

He squeezed, and Johannes squeezed back, his frown smoothing out with perfect trust in Hidelbert’s ability to take the power he couldn’t control and shape it into something beautiful. With that trust held as close to his heart as the burning desire to be _ seen_, to be _ known_, Hidelbert began.

The first step: building the wall of power that would contain the spellform. Always the first step of anything, the first thing even a bumbling, magicless student could learn. 

The second step: building the frame for it, delicate threads that slowly made up the skeleton of what it could be. This was not what a student was taught, but Hidelbert had been given access to the library almost four years ago, and he knew the theory behind it.

The third step: fill in the shape of the spell with power, nothing but power, an endless, limitless tide. Here was where only a Master would typically tread, their own reserves slowly built over years of practice and steady conditioning. A thing Hidelbert could never do, no matter how much theory he discovered. The thing that Johannes could do without even thinking, except that he was too afraid to try.

Alone, it was impossible for them. But together…

“Lady’s blessing, did you really…?” said the professor of conguration. She’d been generally in favor of gently nudging Hidelbert into a research position without any real influence or access to the younger mages, uncertain of how his unique deficiencies might affect their growth. But since she’d never outright called for his removal from the College, he’d liked her.

Now she was staring at the perfectly ambulatory simulacrum standing in the warded circle built into the floor, Johannes’s power firmly containing the thing they’d built. It had the shape of a pretty woman, her dress trailing out past her and turning into stars, and she tugged her hair out of her face before forming the question for direction in pure magic. An assistant, for research or recollection, capable of pulling up the memories of her caster when even then could not fully recall them.

Simulacrums of her type were rare and limited in use, but impossibly hard to build because they couldn’t be fed by the power of more than one mage. With most Masters still incapable of flooding the form with that much without killing themselves, it left the spellwork mostly in the realm of theory rather than practice.

But Hidelbert was more than a deep well for power to flow into. He could also be a dry riverbed, catching the spring melt of Johannes and pouring him into the shape that fit his magic best, showing him that it could be _ beautiful_. Hidelbert wasn’t empty. He was just waiting for the right person to work with him.

The simulacrum formed a question again. This time, Johannes answered it, a wordless command in the flow of magic between them. Beaming, her eyes made of stars, she lifted her hands and pulled the shape of an image between them, the testing room five minutes ago.

“We did,” Hidelbert said, leaning into Johannes’s slighter frame, unable to hide the excitement in his voice. “Given that Johannes has more than enough power to fuel her, we thought that she would work best as proof of concept.”

There was another long moment of wondrous silence, and then the questions began.

For over an hour, they relayed their methodology and where they’d learned the spell in the first place. Hidelbert took charge here, because he understood the concepts better than Johannes could after a bare few months of study. But when it came to questions about the feeling of it, the amount of energy needed, how long it could last—finally Johannes spoke up, nervously at first and then slowly firming with confidence when it became clear he wouldn’t be reprimanded for daring to use his power. Like a dance, they handed off control of the simulacrum, had her present a memory of Hidelbert’s that was oddly fogged over with Johannes’s perceptions of events, and finally they unwound her. Well trained, Johannes let the magic flow back into the world, grounding it properly outside of himself rather than burying it where it could only hurt later.

Finally, the tribunal released them. Their fingers had been wound together for so long that Hidelbert was sure his would be numb, but he couldn’t bear to let go. Not when Johannes had so easily done the thing he’d longed to do for _ years_, had finally given him the chance to be a real mage. His advisor was no longer waiting outside the door, her older bones likely aching for the comfort of her office chair, but he didn’t drag Johannes upstairs immediately.

Instead, Hidelbert tugged him close once the door shut and kissed him, clutching Johannes’s hand to his own face.

For a second, Johannes faltered, his blue eyes going wide and his breath hitching. Then he was kissing back just as fierce, his free hand fisting in the fine wool of Hidelbert’s vest and keeping him there. Frantic, exultant, Hidelbert kissed him again and again, barely stopping to breathe before pulling away.

“I was beginning to wonder,” Johannes whispered, a red flush across his cheeks, “if I was overthinking things.”

“I really should have asked first,” Hidelbert whispered back, glancing at the door to the test hall. Better not to be caught getting handsy out here, not when they were still counting on the tribunal’s judgement of their work.

“I don’t think so. I think you should kiss me again instead.” That fierce look was back in his eyes, the fire that said he thought Hidelbert was more than just a thing to be used. He was the first one to ever say that Hidelbert was more than _ empty_.

“Well, if you insist.” And then he stopped caring about what the tribunal might think, because the most important person in the world had something to ask of him instead. No matter what everyone else might think, they had proven something today.

Together, they were everything.

**Author's Note:**

> This ended up somewhere a little more sweet than bitter, but Hidelbert had the unfortunate tendency to plaster a smile on his face and act like everything's fine when it isn't, which makes it... harder to narrate just how unfair he finds his own situation.


End file.
